Sunday, January 29, 2012

Even though our theme is called Getting There, the USS Thresher never did. She was a nuclear submarine that sank off the coast of Massachusetts in 1963. It was the height of the Cold War, and the fear of anything nuclear was very real. I grew up with it, and we felt that any large war that broke out had the potential to be the last one mankind would ever see. I was three years old when the Thresher sank, so I can’t say I remember it. But I imagine that the first thing people worried about would have been the radiation. This context adds resonance to Pete Seeger’s song The Thresher. To Seeger, the sinking is a morality tale that demonstrates the folly of war in general, and nuclear weapons in particular. He makes his case quite eloquently.

I should note that, in the sinking of the Thresher, we got lucky. The ship’s nuclear rods were eventually recovered intact, and no leaked radiation was ever discovered.

Even though our theme is called Getting There, the USS Thresher never did. She was a nuclear submarine that sank off the coast of Massachusetts in 1963. It was the height of the Cold War, and the fear of anything nuclear was very real. I grew up with it, and we felt that any large war that broke out had the potential to be the last one mankind would ever see. I was three years old when the Thresher sank, so I can’t say I remember it. But I imagine that the first thing people worried about would have been the radiation. This context adds resonance to Pete Seeger’s song The Thresher. To Seeger, the sinking is a morality tale that demonstrates the folly of war in general, and nuclear weapons in particular. He makes his case quite eloquently.

I should note that, in the sinking of the Thresher, we got lucky. The ship’s nuclear rods were eventually recovered intact, and no leaked radiation was ever discovered.

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